A Brief History Of The Durotrigians

I live in a house where each time I step outside the front door and look towards the south, I see the abandoned mighty green humps and ridges.

- David Grenfell

These originally formed the defensive bulwarks of Maiden Castle, the largest and most complex hill fort in both Britain and Europe (Figs.1 & 2). These ramparts soar upwards from the surrounding, lower, cultivated fields of the local Dorset farmlands and dominate the horizon.

It is a sight that immediately reminds me that 2,500 years ago both the fort and the ground I am standing on were once the tribal domain of the Bronze and Iron Age Durotrigian Celtic tribes. The hill fort at 47 acres or 19 hectares is big enough to hold around 50 football pitches and lies 432 feet above sea level. Its complex multivallate defensive banks and ditches which, when originally constructed, would have been clothed in the freshly excavated gleaming white chalk, follow the natural oval contour of its supporting hill.

It has two entrances one each at the eastern and western ends and is the only hillfort in Britain to exhibit this feature. All other hillforts have only one entrance, which would have allowed more economic use of their warriors when attacked. Perhaps, because of its vast length, Maiden Castle has two to reduce the entry time for some of the inhabitants by saving them the trudge around the outside of the bulwarks to a single entrance. In the late 4th century the Romans built a temple and house in the interior of the fort near the eastern gateway.